Lewis employs a first-person central reminiscent point of view in the novel.

Readers see what Orual sees, as she remembers it in the first part; as she learns it in the second. Her dreams and visions, vehicles for much of the archetypal subtext, are also used by Lewis to prefigure the revelations of the second part and to justify them. And the twopart structure itself is an original means of organizing the narrative. It enables Lewis to present this autobiography with an immediacy a more conventional ordering would not have.

Moreover, by casting the account in the form of a deposition, a legalistic accusation of the gods for their abuse of humankind, Lewis strengthens his protagonist's characterization, for on her believability rests the plausibility of the novel.